


Out of Time

by MrProphet



Series: The Lost [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 21:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10795065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Out of Time

_P35-91A_

Close to, Colonel Jack O'Neill just could not see what was so special about the hill. When Jonas Quinn had pointed it out on the UAV footage – smoothly-domed and an almost perfect oval in plan – it had been obvious that it was something extraordinary, but now the lines were broken up by the grass and low shrubs which poked through the crust of snow. The snow itself made a difference as well; under that uniform blanket of white, every hill looked smooth.

"The weather report said nothing about snow," Jack complained. "Rain, maybe, but not snow."

"The weather report was for Colorado Springs," Jonas pointed out. "In June."

Jack stared at the younger man. "It's August," he pointed out.

"Sometimes I like to rewatch old favourites," Jonas admitted.

Major Sam Carter smiled at the banter. "Snow must be pretty standard around here," she noted. "Judging by the vegetation we must be close to the permafrost boundary, assuming this planet has that degree of climatic variation. This is tundra."

"This is _cold_ ," Jack corrected. "Let's check out your hill so we can get back. Hand me a mattock, T; at least digging will keep me warm."

"Sir!" Sam protested, as Teal'c fetched the required tools from the FRED. "We should at least do a preliminary geophysical survey before we start in with the picks and shovels."

"We have no picks, Major Carter," Teal'c noted, "only mattocks."

"You and Jonas go over there and wave whatever box of tricks you like at the hill," Jack offered. "We'll stay here and do it the old fashioned way."

Sam shook her head. "Just don't come crying to me if you hit a void and fall to your deaths."

"You have my word."

"Come on Jonas," Sam said. "You start off with the resistivity test and I'll run some basic magnetometry scans."

They went along the hillside until they reached a small bulge which broke the smooth lines of the hill. This was also too regular for a natural formation.

"There's got to be something under this," Jonas declared. He set up the resistivity meter with a huge grin on his face, as excited by the prospect of this discovery as Daniel would have been.

The sound of digging drifted along the side of the hill and with it a tuneless dirge.

"Oh, the Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah...Come on, Teal'c; you know the words!"

"I do not, O'Neill."

"Alright; I'll go first and you follow."

"I just hope we find something soon," Sam said, suppressing a shiver.

"I've got a good feeling about this," Jonas assured her. "There are tingles running up and down my spine and all my hair is standing on end."

Sam frowned. "Really? Mine too."

Jonas looked at her and set down the resistivity probe. "We've got an EMF meter, haven't we?"

Sam nodded and took the meter from her vest pocket. She switched it on and the dial leaped straight to the red. She exchanged a look with Jonas and as one they turned towards the singing.

"Colonel!" they cried, with a single voice.

Jack looked up from his digging. "Oh come on!" he called back. "The singing wasn't that bad."

Teal'c raised his mattock and swung it downwards in a mighty arc. The narrow blade bit deep into the soil. Teal'c was hurled violently away from the hillside; the blade remained imbedded in the soil and the handle of the mattock caught fire.

"Teal'c!" Jack ran to Teal'c's side, but hung back until Sam and Jonas caught up with him. "What happened?" he demanded.

"The object under the hill is surrounded by a powerful EM field," Sam explained. "It should be safe..." she crouched beside Teal'c and gently touched his arm. When no charge threw her back, she checked the Jaffa's pulse.

"Carter?" Jack asked, a note of unease in his voice.

"I am well, O'Neill," Teal'c said, slowly opening his eyes.

Sam shook her head in astonishment. "You're made of some pretty stern stuff," she told Teal'c.

"Next time I go charging in with the mattocks, you have my permission to smack me upside the head," Jack told Teal'c. "Carter, what are our options now?"

" _Careful_ survey and excavation," Sam replied. "The field seems to be carried in the surface of the buried object; we should be fine as long as we don't go through the turf. It may also be that there's a break in the field, if it's being generated deliberately. That would be the first thing to check for."

"I want to take a look at the lake," Jonas added.

Jack was confused. "I thought it was a river?"

"I think it's a very long lake," Jonas assured the Colonel. "Or rather, an impact crater filled with meltwater."

"Meteorite?" Jack asked.

"More likely a spacecraft," Sam replied. "That's the result of a lateral crash; something that was levelling off and slowing down."

Jack paused for a long moment in thought. "Run your field scans and check the lake, but we don't dig until we can bring up some support. If this _is_ an alien spaceship I want to do this..." He hesitated, as though the next words he spoke were slightly distasteful to him. "... _by the book_. You know; decontamination teams, biohazard, those yellow secure area tapes."

"Yes, Sir," Sam grinned. "Teal'c; you feel up to a little electronic survey work?"

Teal'c sat up. "I believe so, Major Carter."

"Think carefully, Teal'c," Jack warned. "This will involve lots of staring at little screens."

"Well, I need someone to help me out, Colonel," Sam noted, "so if Teal'c isn't up to it..."

"He's fine!" Jack declared. "Knock him down he gets right back up again. Like a Weeble. Isn't that right, Teal'c?"

"I have never encountered the race of Weebles," Teal'c assured Jack. "However, I am in good health. My body absorbed the force of the blast and my symbiote was able to restart my heart."

"Your heart stopped?" Jonas asked, eagerly. He managed to make it sound as though he wished the near-death experience had happened to _him_.

"And he says he's in good health," Jack added, fondly. "Alright, Major; do the survey thing."

*

_Five days later_

Jonas sat at a trestle in the tent which had been erected as an incident room for the excavation. On the screen of his laptop, a model of the buried object rotated, slowly; there could be no doubt that it was artificial and little question that it was a spaceship. A ground-scanning radar image taken from a reconnaissance UAV had revealed that the hull was almost perfectly smooth and that it extended at least half as far below ground as the hill rose above it. It was just over four hundred yards long and some fifty yards across, built along the lines of a cuttlefish or squid with a narrow, pointed brow and a flattened cylinder for a hull. The estimated displacement was more than two-hundred-thousand tonnes.

The layer of earth which covered the ship, bound together by the vigorous roots of the tundra grass, was barely an inch thick on the windward side, but over six inches in the lee of the mound where Jack and Teal'c had begun digging. Jonas had called on the services of Captain Keel, one of the SGC's combat weathermen, to work out that the driving, arctic winds on the planet would have taken around twenty-five years to create such a covering.

The silhouette on the screen showed that there was probably a hatch in the blister which Jonas and Sam had first examined, but there was no sign of a break in the field which surrounded the hull. Sam was working on a way to bypass the field. While they waited, a remote-controlled excavator had been brought through the Gate to expose the hatch; as soon as Jonas confirmed the measurements, the digging would begin. He checked the dimensions on the screen against those on his notepad; they matched perfectly.

With an excited grin, Jonas picked up the notepad and hurried out to the dig site.

 

The blade of the excavator cut through the turf and bucket after bucket of sandy, root-bound soil was tipped away. Very soon, the blade struck the hull of the ship and sparks flew up along the excavator arm. With its circuits hardened against electromagnetic interference and no human operator to be harmed, the digger carried on, unperturbed. At first, Jonas was concerned that the ship might be damaged, but – as Sam pointed out – anything that remained more-or-less intact while crashing to a planet's surface from space was unlikely to be bothered overmuch by a few knocks from a steel shovel.

After just ten minutes, the hull lay exposed. The surface was covered in a blackened layer where it had burned on re-entry, but wherever the blade of the excavator had struck, lines of bright silver metal were visible. The excavator was moved away and another piece of equipment moved up; a sandblaster. The heavy nozzle almost looked like a toy in Teal'c's hands, but the pressure of the grit would have been enough to strip the flesh from a person's bones in seconds.

"You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find an open sandblaster in the Air Force these days," Sam commented. "Everything's all vacuum blasting – much better for the environment, of course, but we can't press anything against the hull."

"I had no idea your expertise extended to industrial cleansing," Jack drawled.

"I have many skills," Sam replied. "We'd better stand back," she added, passing Jack a pair of goggles. "One of the reasons everyone uses vacuum blasters is that it keeps all the grit out of the air."

Teal'c was dressed in a full protective suit, heavy gauntlets and facemask; the rest of the extended survey team – a dozen eager geophysicists and engineers – wore goggles and kept well clear of the hull. The compressor was switched on with a thunderous rattle and Teal'c pulled the lever, unleashing a fierce sandstorm against the hull. After five minutes, the Jaffa released the lever. Now the hull stood completely exposed, shining like silver and unblemished despite the battering it had received.

Jonas approached as close as he dared. "Do you see what I see?"

"Access panel," Sam agreed. She held up the EMF meter. "If there's an opening in the field it's too small for this meter to detect."

"We could poke it with a stick," Jack suggested.

Jonas and Sam shared a look.

Sam shrugged. "If they think you're technical, go crude," she quoted. She backed off and retrieved the remote control for the excavator.

"That's not technically a stick," Jack noted.

"Well, these days you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness," Sam replied.

The excavator trundled slowly forward. It planted its supports, rotated its body and slowly extended its second arm – the one with the pneumatic drill – until the tip of the drill touched the panel. Sam carefully worked the controls so that the drill juddered around, moving outwards in a rough spiral pattern. The moment the tip touched the hull beside the panel, the charge arced along the arm.

"This could be fiddly," Sam admitted. "We need something a little more subtle."

"MALP?" Jonas suggested.

"Might just do it," Sam agreed, "although we'll fry the probe if we touch the hull."

Jack nodded. "Crack it open," he said. "In fact, get someone else to do it. I want the four of us geared up by the time that hatch opens."

*

Jack O'Neill was not a fan of biohazard gear, but he recognised its importance. The SGC had encountered far too many alien plagues for him to be blasé about the risks of contamination.  On this occasion he was actually quite pleased to be wearing the sealed suit. The ship had been buried with the hatch still sealed; that meant that the crew were still inside and that the air within could very well smell extremely bad.

Using the MALP's manipulator arm, Lieutenant Schneider of the SGC Science Corps had opened the access panel and carefully removed the control surface within. With painstaking care, the technicians had then laboured over the wiring to bypass whatever further security systems were still in place. It was a complicated set up, but so was a biohazard suit; by the time SG-1 were changed, armed and ready, the bypass was in place, awaiting only the command to release the lock.

"Although we haven't actually tested it," Dr Lee admitted. "There's a small chance it will trigger a more active defence."

Jack looked at him. "I love you guys. You know that, right?"

"You might want to stand back," Dr Lee admitted.

"We'll do that."

It was almost an anticlimax when the hatch simply slid open.

"The field is gone," Sam reported. "We're good to go."

"Right," Jack said. "Okay; go slow, don't take any chances, but try not to shoot anyone harmless. Carter; priorities?"

"The ship still has power," Sam said. "We should try to find the control room. We'll probably lose contact with the outside world once we get inside the hull and our first priority must be to activate the ship's communications to create a relay. Then we can look for any surviving crew, perhaps in suspended animation. If there aren't any survivors...we should call home and get General Hammond to arrange a parking space."

"I feel morally conflicted," Jack admitted. "Do we want anyone to be alive in there or not?"

Jonas looked thoughtful. "Considering they would have been trapped underground for the last twenty-five years, I'd hope for their sake that if any of the crew survived they left a long time ago."

"There is a story told of a Jaffa crew who were trapped aboard a stranded ha'tak vessel," Teal'c added. "Their Lord had programmed the ship's systems to require his personal authorisation for the release of a number of key systems, including airlocks, transport rings or long-range communications. The Goa'uld was killed in the crash and could not be revived. The Jaffa survivors waited, but no one came. In order to survive, they were forced to eat the bodies of their slain comrades. In time, their symbiotes matured and took over their bodies; still no rescue came. The young Goa'uld cooperated for a time, but, unable to release the doors, they eventually turned on each other. When at last the vessel was found, a single Goa'uld remained. In a frenzy of hunger, he attacked his rescuers and was killed."

Jack shook his head in mock astonishment. "I just can't think why you never get invited to parties, Teal'c."

The hatch led into an airlock. Sam checked the outer door controls carefully before closing the hatch and cycling the lock to admit them to the main body of the ship. Inside it was dark, the only illumination the flashlights on their P90s.

The light fell on a body. It was twisted and broken, so that it was hard to say much about it, but although it was humanoid, it was not human. The skin was gold, the eyes small and wide-spaced and the mouth quite tiny; there was no nose and the flesh of the neck was broken by long gill-slits. It – there was no way to know if the body were male or female, if the species even had separate sexes – was dressed in a suit of shiny material that was obviously a crewman's fatigues, despite the strangeness of the design. A wide, copper-coloured stain surrounded the body; a blood stain.

"Anyone want to guess what happened here?" Jack asked.

Jonas examined the scene, critically and shone his light up and down the passageway. "It must have been the impact that killed it," he decided. "There are stains all along the floor; I guess it..." He looked a little sick. "Bounced," he finished.

"Lovely," Jack drawled.

"Dr Lee?" Sam called. There was no response. "The hull must be blocking our signals," she noted; this was no less disconcerting for all that they had expected it.

"Alright," Jack said. "Teal'c and I will work our way towards the back and look for survivors; Carter, you and Jonas head forward and look for the control room. Report anything at once; check in every five minutes and return to the airlock if you lose contact."

"Yes, Sir," Sam agreed. "Come on, Jonas."

"Right behind you," Jonas agreed, eagerly.

 

"I do not like this place," Teal'c announced.

"Don't beat about the bush," Jack replied. "Say what you really think."

"The air here is bad," Teal'c explained, nervously shifting his grip on his shotgun. "It is like a charnel house; a place of death."

Jack nodded his head. "I hear ya, buddy," he said. Of course he could not smell a thing in his suit but his own aftershave, but there was a feel to the place, with its dark, close spaces. Perhaps it was something to do with being underground, although Cheyenne Mountain never felt this... _dead_.

"Although I have abandoned the superstitions which were long bred into my people, I am ill at ease entering a tomb," Teal'c went on.

"Who isn't."

Jack's flashlight beam lit upon another body, this one human, clad in the remains of a dark green uniform. The flesh was waxy, but looked firm and resisted a prod with the barrel of Jack's P90. Jack pushed the body onto its back; the sightless eyes were covered in a whitish film, the face marred where blood had pooled in its bruises after death.

"I was wrong," Teal'c said. "If there were even the life of a tomb in this place, the body would have decayed. This vessel is beyond the grave."

Jack picked at the torn and tattered uniform. It had been stripped of all medals and insignia, but around the cuff a single word was picked out in gold thread. "Well...That's weird," Jack muttered.

"You know this livery?" Teal'c asked.

Jack looked up at his friend. "It's an Afrika Corps uniform," he replied. He picked up his radio. "Carter," he said. "Ah...We got Nazis."

 

"Say again, Sir?" Carter asked. "Did you say..."

" _Nazis_ ," Jack repeated. " _Well, Wehrmacht Afrika Corps, to be precise. I mean, the poor bastard isn't carrying a party membership card or anything. From the state of his uniform, I'd say he was held prisoner for a long time before the crash._ "

"Sounds like a fair assessment," Carter agreed.

" _Carter?_ "

"Jonas and I have found the prison."

As she spoke, strips of light flickered on, from the balcony where she stood to a point sixty yards distant. Blinking in the sudden illumination, she lifted her eyes to look along the long chamber ahead of her. The chamber rose through three storeys, the upper two without floors, only walkways. Each storey was lined with what could only be cells; small alcoves, with openings unblocked by any physical door. The prison block was empty and quiet; even with the lights restored, the force fields which must have barred the cell doors remained inactive.

"Good work!" Sam called. "Did you manage to reroute the power to the lights?"

"Sort of!" Jonas called back; from the sound of his voice he was almost directly below her. "I found the light switch! _And_ a status panel. The script is familiar; it's related to some of the writings found in Nirrti's laboratory on Hanka and..."

Sam leaned over the balcony, but she could not see her comrade. "Jonas?" she called.

"Major Carter, I think...Yes. One of the cells is still sealed."

Sam paused, feeling vaguely nauseous. "I'm not sure I want to look at whatever's left in there."

"I think you might," Jonas told her. "If I'm reading this panel aright, it's a temporal _stasis_ field."

"Where?"

"Second level, cell...Thirteenth door on the right hand side."

"Thirteenth?" Sam shrugged. "Unlucky for some. I'll meet you there. Sir; we _may_ have a survivor."

" _Take it nice and slow_ ," Jack cautioned. " _Remember, not everyone is grateful for being rescued...In fact, I think I can count on the fingers of one foot the number of people who ever said thank you_."

"We'll be careful," Sam promised.

Jonas was halfway to the door by the time Sam made it down to the second level. She called for him to be careful and he slowed down, but he still arrived well before her. Sam caught up with him and saw him standing, staring into the cell.

"So there's something..." Sam stopped short. "Oh. There's some _one_."

The cell's occupant was a young woman. She wore a pair of khaki battle-dress trousers in an old-fashioned cut and a stained, worn t-shirt. Her head was almost completely shaven, only a dark stubble remaining on her scalp; dark green, bloodshot eyes stared balefully from a thin, bruised face that might once have been attractive. Now, an intricate tattoo covered the left side of her face from temple to chin, stretching halfway around the orbit of her eye. With her arms bare, it was plain to see that there was also a number tattooed on her left forearm, while her right bore a cluster of alien symbols, similar to the design on her face.

And she had apparently been frozen in the act of sitting down on a slab-like bench of a bed, so that she hung, poised just beyond the point of equilibrium.

"Complete temporal stasis," Sam realised. "That girl has been locked in a static area of isolated space-time for...what would you say? Thirty years?"

"Something like that," Jonas agreed. "God, they can't have thought much of her."

Sam gave him a strange look. "How do you mean?"

"Simple courtesy would demand that even a heinous criminal gets to sit down and compose herself _before_ the stasis field goes on," Jonas explained. "Still; the field probably saved her life."

"Can we shut it down?" Sam wondered aloud. " _Should_ we shut it down? _Can_ we?" she repeated, coming back to the question that concerned her most.

Jonas grinned. "Only one way to find out," he said.

*

"It's like the Klingons gatecrashed a Hitler Youth convention," Jack decided, as he and Teal'c picked their way through the corpses lining the corridor.

"I believe that it was the other way around," Teal'c suggested. "It appears that these humans were attempting to gain entry to the chamber ahead; the ship's crew were defending the hatch."

Jack nodded. "What about weapons?" he asked.

"Most of the humans were killed by the crash; the rest appear to have been wounded or killed by a mixture of projectile weapons and energy beams. They appear to have been unarmed."

"Look again," Jack said, pointing at the doorway which seemed to have formed the focus of the dispute. The door itself had been damaged and hung in a twisted wreck, half-blocking the doorway. The surface was pitted and scorched.

"Then someone survived to take away the weapons," Teal'c noted.

"Cheerful thought, isn't it."

"Do you recognise these uniforms?" Teal'c asked, indicating some of the other bodies.

Jack stooped to examine one of the bodies. "Same era as the last; definitely North Africa from the colour scheme. I think...maybe British. The ones in black are SS, although they look as though they were prisoners as well." He stood again. "Let's see what the crew were protecting."

Teal'c nodded. He raised his shotgun and took the lead. "Do you believe these aliens are hostile?" he asked.

"Well, they were abducting people," Jack said, "but on the other hand they were shooting Nazis. Guess it could go either way."

Teal'c ducked through the gap beneath the door and Jack followed. They emerged onto what was clearly the flight deck of the ship, for all that it was located at the rear of the ship. A semicircle of consoles was arranged so that the operators would have been facing the door, or rather facing a large viewscreen that was flanked by their door and one other. Several of them had clearly died using those consoles as cover and a number of the consoles had suffered considerable damage.

"No wonder the ship went down," Jack noted.

Teal'c approached the command chair in the centre of the bridge. One of the aliens had died in that chair, perhaps the captain going down with his ship, so to speak. "O'Neill," Teal'c said.

"Well," Jack commented, "that's a twist."

The alien was dressed in a uniform, pristine apart from the blast damage to the chest; it was the uniform of an SS Obersturmbannführer.

*

"I think I'm almost there," Sam said. The control panel chirruped, gently. "Is that it?"

The air in the chamber flickered and a waft of cool, fresh air struck Jonas in the face; clearly, the cell had been frozen in a time when the air-conditioning was still functioning. The girl finished sitting down.

She raised her head and started at the sight of Jonas. "T'zek tchana'khra?" she demanded.

Jonas paused. "Ah..."

"Wer sind Sie?"

"Oh, ah...Ich...ah..." Jonas thought fast, but although he could read the language fluently, his spoken German was unpractised. "Ich bin..."

The young woman stood up and moved towards him, hands outstretched. "Who are you?" she asked. Her accent was British, but not the clipped tones of the newsreaders Jonas had heard.

"My name is Jonas," Jonas said. "We..."

With a sudden rush, the woman sprang forward and seized hold of Jonas. From beside the door, Sam leaped up, but Jonas was turned around and held tightly in a powerful grip. His own pistol was aimed at Sam's heart; Sam drew and levelled her zat.

"Drop it!" the girl snarled. "Drop the...whatever it is."

"Let him go," Sam returned. "We just want to help you."

"Who the bloody hell are you!" the woman demanded.

"I'm Major Carter, United States Air Force," Sam replied.

The woman laughed and the pistol lowered. "A bloody American! What kind of time do you call this, then?"

"Um...'Scuse me," Jonas grunted through his constricted throat.

The woman paused a moment. "Sorry," she said at last and she released him. "It's been a funny couple of years." The pistol was still aimed at Sam's midriff, but Jonas moved between them and she shifted her aim to the back of his head. "Now tell me; whose side are you on?"

*

Jack checked over the commander's console; it came to life at his touch, but a screen above the controls blinked insistently and every other effort merely produced an unpleasant squawk. Jack did not have to be a computer scientist to recognise a command prompt and an error message.

"O'Neill," Teal'c called, softly.

Jack looked up and Teal'c gave a slight nod towards a door at the back of the control deck. Jack moved casually up the steps to the ring of consoles; as he approached, he heard a muffled thump from behind the door. He nodded to Teal'c and they moved towards the door, weapons raised. Teal'c reached out and touched the door controls.

A man erupted from the doorway in an avalanche of computer tape and machine parts. He stumbled across the deck, past Jack and Teal'c, then rolled onto his back and raised a weapon; it was clearly a weapon, although of unknown and unfamiliar design. "Get away from me!" the man cried, angrily.

Jack and Teal'c spun around and levelled their own weapons at the man.

"Whoa!" Jack called. "We're not your enemies. Here to help."

"How can I be sure?" the man demanded. Now that he was still, Jack could see that the man was wearing another battered WWII-era uniform in desert colours. He looked to be almost sixty – although clearly still pretty spry – and his lean face was half-hidden behind a mass of tangled hair and beard. A tattoo sprawled over the left-hand side of his face.

"You're just gonna have to trust us," Jack replied, "especially since there's two of us and only one of you. Why don't you put the weapon down and we'll talk."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you," he snorted. "Show me a friendly face and I'll lay down my arms and surrender like a good little prisoner. Well, your friends haven't got me in thirty years and you won't get me now without a fight."

Jack was confused. "Our...friends? You mean the Nazis?"

The man spat, angrily. "Bastards. But even they couldn't have got to me here; you _must_ be aliens!"

*

"I'm an officer of the US Air Force," Sam repeated. "We're on _your_ side. America and Britain have been allies for a long time."

"A long time," the woman laughed, bitterly. "So where have you been for the last three years?"

"Three years?" Sam looked confused.

"Actually, you've been here longer than you think," Jonas told the woman. "The war is over now. You're...English, right?"

"Scottish," the woman replied, offended. "What about you? You don't sound quite like a Yank?"

"I'm Kelownan. My name is Jonas Quinn. What about you? What's your name?"

"Dent," she said. "Private Sandy Dent; G Patrol, Long Range Desert Group. What do you mean the war is over? Did the...Who won?"

"We did," Sam assured her. Slowly, she lifted her zat to point at the ceiling, then snapped it closed. "See; I'm putting my weapon away, Private Dent. We mean you no harm."

Warily, the young woman lowered Jonas' pistol. After a moment more, she reversed the weapon and passed it back to Jonas.

"Thank you," Jonas said.

"Sorry about your throat, Mr Quinn."

"Call it part of the learning curve," Sam suggested.

Sandy smiled. "I guess I owe you my thanks as well. I am sorry, but I thought you were one of them. It seems only a moment ago that...I lose track of time in this damn cell and I've been blacking out. I can't even work out what _year_ it is by now. Forty-four? Forty-five?" She looked at their faces. "It _can't_ be 1946 already."

"I...think we'd better take you back to base," Sam decided. "You may have a little acclimatising to do."

*

"Do we look like aliens?" Jack demanded.

"Ah-ha!" the old man declared, triumphantly. "They never do though, do they? They look like the bloody SS in their black uniforms; it's only when they've got you on the back foot that they take their faces off and then...!"

"Yes," Jack said, "we've seen...them. But we're not aliens; we're Americans."

"Almost as bad."

"I am an alien," Teal'c reminded Jack.

"Yes, Teal'c," Jack agreed, with forced patience. "Thank you for reminding me, but he's a _friendly_ alien."

The weapon wavered in the old man's hand. "But... _you_ are American?"

"Yes."

The weapon fell to the deck. "You can take me back to Earth?"

"Yes," Jack agreed. "That is where you come from?" He offered his hand to the old man, who was still lying on his back.

"It is. I was born in Windsor; Major Philip Wilkes is my name. I served in G Patrol, Long Range Desert Group during the War." Wikes accepted the proffered hand and shook it before allowing himself to be helped to his feet. He was not much more than five-foot-six, but very broad in the shoulders and chest; his grip on Jack's hand was strong.

"The Second World War?" Jack asked.

The man looked alarmed. "There have been more since?"

"Just the two," Jack assured him. "I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill, United States Air Force," he added. "This is Teal'c."

"United States Air Force? That's a new one on me," Wilkes admitted. "But then, that's hardly surprising, is it? Thirty years is a long time."

"Yes," Jack agreed, warily. "That's how long you've been here? Thirty years?"

"Best guess."

"Which would make it...?"

"Some time around 1971," Wilkes replied. He was growing nervous. "Why? Is that wrong?"

Jack took the canteen from his belt and offered Wilkes a drink of water. "Tell us what happened," he suggested.

"Thanks." Wilkes took a long draught and sighed in pleasure. "Oh, that's good," he said. "I haven't tasted fresh, distilled water in so long. Since the crash I've been living on the same fifty gallons, over and over and over; I must have pissed every drop in these pipes a hundred times." He handed the canteen back.

"You keep it," Jack offered.

"I'm obliged to you." Wilkes settled himself on a seat behind a damaged console. "Well, my patrol was intercepted by Gerry as we returned from a raid on a Luftwaffe airfield; that was in May 1941. I've had a long time to think about it and I believe that someone in the camp sold us out; there was no other way there could have been so many Germans in that position, all lying in wait for us. Most of the patrol got through, anyway – mobility was our watchword – but nine of us were captured. We were held by the Wehrmacht for three months, then in the late summer we were transferred to the custody of the SS.

"None of us knew why the SS were interested in us. We'd been held so long that we had no useful intelligence anymore; we were just nine soldiers with most of the fight knocked out of us. But the SS came and they took us away and questioned us for another five weeks about Group tactics. Then...Then they got orders to transfer us to custody of another group. They loaded us into a transport along with a dozen or so of our Waffen-SS guards. They drove us out into the desert and then..." Wilkes held out his hand and mimed a lift off.

Jack was sceptical. "So...You were abducted by a bunch of aliens dressed up as Nazis?"

Wilkes took another drink of water. "Yes."

"Damn. I think we've just lost the title for ‘who's got the weirdest story?'" Jack muttered. "And after...What was it?"

"Five years straight," Teal'c replied, bleakly.

"Bummer."

"It took a few weeks to realise that they were not only not from this...of our world – the first clue was that the SS soldiers were thrown into the cells opposite us – but that they were not even human. Once it was apparent, they abandoned their pretence and removed their human faces. It was as though they had been wearing masks which they now lifted off, except that their inhuman faces were somehow larger than the human faces which concealed them."

"Yeah; aliens," Jack chuckled. "They just keep you guessing."

"At first, these aliens merely interrogated us, as the Gerries had done. Once they were done with that – perhaps a month after we were brought to this vessel – they began performing their experiments." Wilkes' face grew haunted. "We were injected with drugs and exposed to gases; our bodies were cut and we were held for long periods of time under partial or complete sedation. We began to feel as though our bodies were no longer our own. Then we began to wake with scars on out heads and we knew that they were cutting into our brains.

"One by one, the others succumbed to this treatment. They died and were taken away; I heard the aliens say that they were to be...dissected. In the end, those of us who remained – by that point these were mostly Germans, including some SS officers – joined forces to resist our captors. We were able to overpower the guards, release the security devices which created the invisible barriers and assault this control centre."

"With hilarious consequences."

Wilkes winced. "We were desperate men, Sir. A quick, clean death was preferable to waiting for their tests to kill us. That's what the other lads got; a quick, clean death. Not I, however. I survived the crash – God alone knows how – and I've been living on the alien bastards' bloody synthesised rations and recycled water ever since. I tried to get out but the hatches were all jammed; from the sound when I knocked, they were covered by earth and there was not enough power to force them open. The actual damage to the structure seems to be minimal, but as near as I have been able to make out, the ship is all-but dead. Her engines have packed in, although whatever kind of batteries they use have been running the lights and the ventilation for three decades."

"That is impressive," Teal'c noted. "Few vessels could survive such an impact without considerable damage, both internally and externally."

"If that's the case, we could probably get her up and running again with a couple of techs and a few naquadah reactors," Jack mused.

"Naquadah reactors?" Wilkes asked, nonplussed.

Jack strove to find the words he needed. "Like...really _good_ batteries," he offered. He sighed. "You haven't been away for thirty years," he said at last. "You've been away for sixty."

"Good God."

"Come on," Jack said, kindly. "Let's get you out in the fresh air, then we'll take you back to Earth."

"Home." Wilkes looked as though he could hardly believe it.

*

" _Carter_!"

Sam picked up her radio and moved away from the cell. "Go ahead, Sir."

"Is that...Is that a _radio_?" Sandy asked Jonas. "It's so _small_."

"We'll explain everything," Jonas promised. "Soon. But perhaps you can explain something to _me_ first?"

"I'm not sure how much I could tell _you_. Your weapons are like nothing I've ever seen; even your clothes...How long have I been here?"

"More than three years," Jonas replied, evasively, "but please; I didn't think that women served in combat during your war."

Sandy shrugged. "More or less true," she admitted. "I see that's not the case with your army."

"Air Force, actually...And they're not _my_ Air Force, exactly. I just work with them. Do you mind telling me your story?"

Sandy shook her head. "I was married in January of 1941, to a man named Jonathon Dent. He was a great traveller and he took me to Africa for our honeymoon, which seemed rather an odd choice; I didn't know at the time that he was a spy, surveying the land."

"And he took you with him?"

"He was a spy," Sandy replied. "I made good cover. Not good enough as it turned out; when the Italians invaded Egypt, he was arrested and shot as a spy. I escaped and signed on as a nursing assistant with the British Army. I turned out to be a pretty god-awful nurse, but I wanted to do something. I started learning everything I could about fighting; anything anyone would teach me. One of the officers of the Long Range Desert Group noticed what I was doing – and that I was more a hazard than a help in the hospital – and offered to take me on with his patrol. He was short on men and said he'd use anyone who wanted to fight. I knew that he really wanted to get me into bed and was offering me what _I_ wanted, but I didn't mind. He was handsome, I was a young widow, and he was right; I wanted to fight. I wanted to _kill_."

"So they accepted you as a soldier?"

"The other soldiers did...slowly. On paper I was a boy, although in real life..."

"...it couldn't have been very convincing," Jonas finished.

Sandy blushed. "Be that as it may," she demurred, "I suffered for the deception. The Wehrmacht weren't so bad, some of them almost respected me as a warrior woman; they looked at me as some sort of Valkyrie. But when the SS took us, they called me..." She paused and shuddered. "They accused me of being a whore and then they tried to use me to make the others talk. I was...abused to punish their resistance; I hated the fact that _I_ was their weakness.

"Since I came here...Since I was brought here, I have been isolated and...experimented on. I've felt sick one day and strong enough to bend steel another; I have had blackouts, dizzy spells and fainting fits; suffered such terrible nightmares and waking dreams. When the Group took me up I got what I wanted and it has brought me almost four years of suffering. I could almost pray that I had died with Jonathon."

She sat down heavily on her bench. Jonas went across and sat next to her; he reached out and took her hand.

"It's alright," he said, gently. "It's over now."

Sandy looked at him, tears shining in her eyes. "Over?" It almost sounded as though she did not believe it, or did not understand the concept that her ordeal could come to an end. "Can I...Can I go home now?" she asked. "Back to my family?"

Jonas tried not to look guilty as he asked: "Do you have any brothers and sisters?" _Nice_ , he thought to himself, _why not just lead with ‘well, your parents will be dead by now'?_

"Katie; she'd be...I just don't know, she was eight when I left in 1941. What year _is_ it now?"

Jonas said nothing.

"How long have I been here?"

"Jonas!"

Jonas leaped eagerly to his feet, glad of the distraction. "Sam?"

"We're heading back," Sam told him.

Jonas nodded and offered Sandy his hand. "Time to go home," he told her.

 

Jack and Teal'c reached the airlock first and waited for their comrades to arrive. Wilkes was practically bouncing up and down with his eagerness to leave the ship. At last, Sam and Jonas appeared, with Sandy walking between them.

Wilkes turned at the sound of their approach. "You!" he hissed.

Sandy stared at him, uncomprehending.

"Nazi bitch!" Wilkes tried to rush at Sandy, but Teal'c caught hold of him. He thrashed uselessly against the Jaffa's strength, before subsiding and clutching at his chest. Teal'c lowered the old man gently to the deck.

Sandy approached, slowly. "Pip?" she asked, uncertainly. "Good God, what happened to you?"

He glowered up at her, angrily. "Traitor," he accused in a ragged gasp.

"No," Sandy protested. "How can you say that, Pip?" She knelt and tried to take his hands, but he recoiled in disgust.

"Don't touch me!" Wilkes snarled.

"What happened to him?" Sandy demanded. "What did they do to him?" She looked around, but no-one would meet her eyes. At last, she stood and grasped Jonas by the shoulders; there was surprising strength in her thin frame. "What year is it? Please tell me!"

"2003," Jonas replied. "You've been here for sixty-two years, Sandy."

Without another word, Sandy collapsed on the deck.

Jack looked at the two survivors, one gripping his chest and one lying in a stupor. "We may need some help carrying them," he suggested.

*

_Stargate Command_

Philip Wilkes and Sandra Dent were brought back to the SGC under guard. Dr Janet Fraiser was paged to the Gateroom and administered an angina treatment which eased Wilkes' suffering. The two commandos were then taken to the infirmary, where Janet gave them a full medical examination. On Wilkes' insistence, Sandy was placed under guard, and two airmen were assigned to escort the Major as well. They were taken to separate VIP rooms and given filtered access to TV broadcasts and the internet in order to help them catch up with the modern world, while SG-1 met with the Commanding Officer and CMO of the SGC to discuss the fate of the survivors and their prison.

"There is an issue of claim," General Hammond noted. "The ship is alien and it crashed on an alien world, but the two survivors on board were English."

"Actually, one was Scottish," Jonas corrected.

Sam rolled her eyes. "The Scottish Assembly haven't even got a finished building yet; I doubt they'll be disputing our claim to an alien spacecraft."

"Maybe," Hammond agreed, "but the British Government may well be difficult about it when we disclose the Stargate Program."

"But when is _that_ going to happen?" Jack asked, rhetorically.

"In forty-one days time," Hammond replied.

All four members of SG-1 sat up in surprise.

"A special meeting for representatives of the Permanent Security Council has been called and a full disclosure will be made," Hammond went on. "Truth is, we've simply been too successful to keep secret any longer. We need to expand operations beyond the ability of the United States to support them; we need to tap into foreign expertise and, ultimately, we're going to need to ease in international funding. Besides, most of them probably know already at one level or another; whatever we may claim, it's just not possible to spend this much money without leaving one hell of a paper trail and our overseas allies spy on us just as much as we spy on them.

"If we do this, let our international partners know on _our_ terms, we have a chance of retaining overall control of the program and if we don't then Senator Kinsey will push it through on _his_ terms and we might as well change the ‘C' in SGC to ‘crusade'."

"I can work up a budget projection for analysing and restoring the ship which would make the DoD blush," Sam offered. "If that doesn't scare the British off..."

"It's a minor concern," Hammond assured her. "At the moment I'm more concerned with our two visitors. How are they coming along?"

"Physically, they're healthy," Janet assured him, "and fingerprints confirm that they are who they say they are, although I think the man at the British Army records office must think I'm nuts for wanting fingerprints for an officer and a nurse reported KIA sixty years ago.

"We know that Major Wilkes suffers from angina," she went on, "but it's impressive that's all that's wrong with him at his age. Physically he seems to be sixty-five, but his joints are in better condition than Colonel O'Neill's and although he used to smoke, this doesn't seem to have left any lasting marks on his lungs. Of course, he wasn't smoking much in the last thirty years."

"What about Sandy?" Jonas asked, concerned.

"Borderline malnutrition," Janet replied. "Otherwise, I hope I'll be in her condition when I'm eighty-five. She's stronger and fitter than just about anyone on this base. She could run a marathon, benches three-hundred pounds and she can hold her breath for almost eight minutes; nothing superhuman, but she could beat any of us in an endurance trial without stretching herself."

"Is she human?" Hammond asked.

"There are a number of anomalous factors in her blood work," Janet admitted, "but I see no reason to classify her as anything other than human. I suspect that her exceptional physical abilities are in part a result of the experiments carried out on her."

"That doesn't make sense, though," Sam said.

"Why carry out procedures to make your prisoners more able to escape," Teal'c agreed.

Jack gave a dark laugh. "Expendable test subjects?" he suggested.

"Has she suffered any ill-effects, physically?" Jonas asked. "She mentioned blackouts, hallucinations..."

Janet nodded. "That would be an understandable side-effect of the changes to her body chemistry. Her blood work is all out of whack; dopamine levels are way up and there are at least three chemicals being produced by her body that I haven't been able to identify. There are also anomalies in her brain activity. While all parts of a human brain _are_ used, ordinarily only about ten percent of a human's _cognitive_ brain is active at any one time. As you recall, accessing the Ancient repository radically increased Colonel O'Neill's cognitive processing levels..."

"Happy days," Jack sighed. "The knowledge, the power, the near-death experience..."

"...but without the efficiency of an Ancient brain, that led to a life-threatening degradation of autonomic function," Janet finished. "Private Dent's brain is firing at around eighteen percent, much lower than the Colonel's had been, but still alarmingly high for a human."

"So she's smart?" Jack asked.

"Not necessarily. In theory she has a lot of raw processing power available to her," Janet explained, "although she could just be a very deeply disturbed young woman."

Jonas frowned. "Well, who wouldn't be after what she's been through? I don't believe that she betrayed her unit, but even if she did I would have to feel sorry for her."

"I still feel more sorry for Wilkes," Jack admitted. "Thirty years is a hell of a long time to be locked in a spaceship, even if it is the size of an aircraft carrier. I go nuts after a few _days_ in a teltac."

"So who do we trust?" Hammond asked. "Major Wilkes' story is uncorroborated, but Private Dent has clearly been more deeply affected by these ‘experiments'."

"We should trust neither until we know more," Teal'c advised. "Keep both here until study of the ship is complete."

Hammond nodded. "Agreed. And on that front, what are your projections, Major Carter?"

"At least a week to survey and assess the damage to the flight deck," Sam replied. "After that we can tap in a naquadah power source and bring the internal sensors back on line; I can't give you a full work estimate until then, but at a conservative guess, we should have the vessel airworthy in a matter of weeks."

"You really think it'll fly again?" Hammond asked.

"Initial examination of the drive sections suggest that three of our reactors should provide basic power for the ship's systems. Meanwhile, the vessel's own generators seem to have suffered only minor damage; we could probably bring them back online." Sam sounded a little dubious as she added: "In fact...it looks as though some repairs have already been made to the reactors. It may be that some of the crew survived the initial crash."

"Wilkes did seem to think that the aliens had been after him during his time in the ship," Jack noted. "It might have been just paranoia talking, but he might have been speaking literally. We left orders for the survey teams to be careful and keep in threes: two techs and a Marine or SF escort."

"How was his bloodwork?" Sam asked.

"Perfectly normal," Janet replied. "Not a thing out of place. Pretty impressive given how long he's been away from home. I guess the aliens must have programmed their food synthesisers to meet the needs of a terrestrial human."

"Next steps?" Hammond asked.

"We brought back a data core and a fancy alien ray gun to have a look at," Sam said. "I'll look at the core and see what we can find out about the ship, but Dr Lee and I will bring up the spares we'll need to repair the flight deck first. It's a long list; we'll need at least two or three of the FREDs to transport it all."

"Take as many as you need," Hammond agreed. "We can always buy more; we can't say the same of that spaceship."

Sam nodded. "We also had a preliminary look at the gun and there's a slight danger of radiation leakage when firing. Teal'c, as your symbiote protects you, Sergeant Siler would appreciate your help in the analysis."

Teal'c inclined his head in agreement.

"I'll see what I can find out from Wilkes," Jack offered. "I seem to have gained his trust quickly enough."

"And I can talk to Sandy," Jonas added.

"Jonas has made another conquest," Sam noted.

"I can't help being a people person," Jonas replied.

"Alright," Hammond said. "Carry on. Anything you find out, report to me at once."

*

"Any problems, Palmer?" Jack asked, as he approached Major Wilkes' VIP room and the two airmen guarding the door.

"All quiet, Sir," Leading Airman Palmer replied. "He took some lunch an hour ago and he's just clicking away on the computer while the TV blares away in the background. He seems half-daft if you ask me."

"That's a Major you're talking about," Jack reminded the airman.

He went into the room and the airmen closed the door behind him. Major Wilkes sat at a desk; he faced a computer and clicked on the links on the screen with the slow, deliberate care of the internet novice, but he had worked out how to tile the large screen with four separate internet windows, reading one while three loaded new pages. The television in the corner was indeed switched on and blaring out loudly; it looked as though he had tuned it to one of the news channels. Jack wondered if Jonas might not get more out of Wilkes; they seemed to have the same multiple input approach to learning.

"How are you finding the twenty-first century, Major?" he asked.

"There is...so much information," Wilkes murmured. "I was shown how this device works and I have been seeking information about my family. I had a daughter, you know; I know that my wife is dead, but I hoped that perhaps my little Molly..."

"It doesn't mean anything if you can't find her," Jack assured him. "There's a lot of information out there, but not everything. Truth to tell, most of it seems to be pornography, self-promotion and Star Trek fan fiction; often at the same time. I'll get one of our administrators to check up on your daughter if you like."

Wilkes paused for a long moment, then shook his head. "I do not think I could bear to meet my little girl and find her as old as I am."

Jack drew up a second chair and sat down. "What makes you think that Private Dent is the one who betrayed your patrol?" he asked.

"What do you know about her?" Wilkes asked.

"Only what she's told us. Her husband was a spy; after he died she wanted revenge and an officer in the LRDG took her on."

"True, as far as it goes," Wilkes allowed. "We were about evenly divided between seeing her as a jinx and a lucky charm, but no-one could deny that she was good at what we did and she had an edge: she spoke good German and between that and the fact that no-one expected a woman to be a threat, she was able to get a good deal closer to a guard than many – assuming that she ever let him see her. Sandy was like a ghost in the night; invisible, silent, lethal." Wilkes shivered. "Part of me felt that a woman shouldn't be like that; part of me..." He fell silent.

"I see."

"I loved my wife, Colonel," Wilkes insisted, "but you get lonely being so far away and..."

Jack held up a hand. "I don't need a diagram," he assured Wilkes. "I've been married, I've been posted overseas and...Why did you think she was a traitor?" he said again.

"Her husband was a spy," Wilkes explained.

"I know."

"But did she tell you that he was a _German_ spy? Jonathon Dent was a member of the League of British Fascists and a known Nazi sympathiser. He had made a point of severing ties once war was declared but it turned out that this was a blind. He spent his honeymoon spying out the land for the Italian invasion. When the attack came he was arrested as a spy and reported executed; a neat way to rid himself of his undesirable bride."

"Undesirable?" Jack prodded.

Wilkes blushed. "To a Nazi. Sandy 's mother was Jewish, which made her...I don't know, subhuman or antihuman or whatever the word is. Dent married her to throw the authorities off the scent. She didn't...I thought that she didn't know what he was like; after all, why would you marry someone who looked at you as subhuman?"

"Why indeed."

"But later on I began to think: Dent's conversion was just so much chicanery, why shouldn't Sandy's story be anything more than that – just a story. Maybe she _did_ know what her husband was up to. And she doesn't _look_ Jewish, after all; I just took her word for it when she told me. Maybe she was just planning to get back to her husband after betraying my patrol. Maybe she was planted as an agent all along."

"But when you were captured she was kept with you," Jack pointed out.

Wilkes shook his head. "She was taken away, always separate from us. At first she was looked after like an honoured guest. When the SS got us she had a worse time of it. I'm betting they got their wires crossed on that one, although it might be that they weren't sure about her anymore; she did do quite a bit of damage while she was with our patrol.

"Or maybe...Maybe she just had a knack for making good which didn't work with the SS. She certainly seemed to get special treatment on the ship and I can't believe she was spying for _them_."

"So you don't trust her?"

"I used to. Not any more. Never again."

*

When Jonas arrived at Sandy 's VIP room, he knocked and waited; he was waiting for a long time.

"Come in," Sandy called at last, in an uncertain voice.

Jonas went in. The television in this room was also tuned to a news channel, but the sound was muted; Sandy was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the screen in bafflement. The computer was switched off.

"I'm not used to people wanting my permission to come in," Sandy admitted, turning her dark green eyes to look at him. "I've been watching the news. It's...It's not like I'm used to. In my day, the news was different...yet somehow the same. It was just all about how great Britain was rather than how great the USA was."

"Back home, it's all about how great Kelowna is," Jonas admitted.

Sandy nodded, slowly. "You're not...from Earth, are you?"

"No, I'm not."

"You look human," she told him, "but you...you feel different."

Jonas frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"You smell...I'm not sure," she said, evasively. "I'm not quite...what I was." She closed her eyes and touched her fingers gently to her eyelids. "They used to be brown," she told him. "My eyes used to be brown and I _hate_ this tattoo."

Jonas sat next to her and raised his hand to cover hers where it lay on her face. "The tattoo doesn't look that bad, and it _can_ be removed," he promised her. "Your eyes are very exotic; they're very beautiful. You'd be a real hit at Goth night," he added hurriedly, turning away with a blush.

"Goth?"

Jonas shrugged. "I don't quite get it either," he admitted. "Can you tell me...Have you any idea why Wilkes might suspect you?"

"I don't know," she replied, hanging her head. "I suppose...We were pretty prestigious prisoners. Rommel came to see us in person and he said that a woman shouldn't be held with men. He knew I was a soldier and a killer, but he was old-fashioned; I wasn't given an easy time, but I _was_ put in my own cell. Perhaps Pip thought that I was being better treated, or that I was living it up in quarters like this while he and the others were in the brig.

"Of course, it can't have helped that Rommel tried to stop the SS from taking me at all," she realised.

"Why did he do that?" Jonas asked.

"I think he knew the officer in charge. He said that he wouldn't let him take custody of a woman, but the SS officer – Standartenführer Vogel – had some sort of special orders." She turned her face away from Jonas. "He couldn't be stopped and I was taken away."

"Rommel was right about him?" Jonas asked.

"Yes," she whispered. "I was probably the only one who was relieved to be taken away by aliens; for a while, at least. Now...I just can't believe that Pip doesn't trust me."

"He was your...He was the officer who brought you into the patrol?"

Sandy nodded, despondently. "He was. And he _was_ my lover and now he thinks I betrayed him. Maybe I _would_ be better off dead."

*

In one of the test chambers on Level 26, Teal'c was having a rather better time than his comrades-in-arms. The alien weapon fit snugly into his arms, the flared, bell-shaped muzzle to the fore and a tapering, down-curving stock. Openings in the rough carapace of the weapon admitted his hands; identical openings opposite each handhold showed that the weapon was designed for either right- or left-handed use. As he inserted his hands, a targeting beam sprang out from the heart of the muzzle. The target for the test combined a standard wooden target dummy and a sophisticated set of sensors to monitor both projectile impacts and energy emissions. The pencil-thin beam played across the surface of the dummy's chest.

"Ready when you are," Sergeant Siler called.

Teal'c nodded. His fingers had found the firing mechanism within the handholds and now he squeezed, gently. There was no recoil, just a brief flash of light and – curiously – a slight smell of peppermint.

Teal'c turned a questioning gaze on Sergeant Siler.

"Results coming through, Sir," Siler assured him. He looked in turn to the young lieutenant in the observation gallery.

"No impact on the target," the lieutenant reported. "Significant energy readings, however and significant vibration. It appears to be a modulated sonic pulse, operating in the frequency range of the human nervous system. The pulse would interfere with voluntary motor impulses; it would have a short-term paralysing effect."

"How short term?" Teal'c demanded.

"I...ah...I don't know, exactly," the lieutenant admitted. "Complete paralysis for the duration of the pulse, I think, with voluntary motor function returning over the space of a few minutes."

Teal'c checked his radiation indicator. "There is no leakage. Sergeant Siler, you will take the weapon."

"Yes, Sir," Siler agreed. He approached and took the weapon in his hands.

Teal'c walked down to the target end of the room. "You may fire when ready, Sergeant Siler."

"Sir?"

"I wish to know how long the effect will last," Teal'c said. "Fire the weapon."

"If you are sure," Siler said, looking to the lieutenant as well as Teal'c.

The lieutenant shrugged, helplessly. "I didn't pick up any readings that would suggest the weapon is capable of causing long-term harm."

"Alright," Siler agreed. He squeezed the trigger.

The weapon flashed. Teal'c cried out and fell to the floor. The nurse hurried over, knelt beside him and found his pulse to be strong.

After less than two minutes, Teal'c sat up. "Lieutenant!" he called. "Is the effect focused solely on the target?"

"No," Lieutenant replied, "it's a wide-area effect; a cone of sound spreading from the muzzle of the weapon."

Teal'c's brow furrowed in a frown. "Then why did he not fire."

*

After Jack had left him, Wilkes continued scanning through news articles for several minutes. Only when he was sure that no-one else was about to enter did he minimise the browser windows to reveal a command prompt. With swift fingers, he entered code after code into the computer until the security systems collapsed before him. With consummate ease, he overrode the alarms and alerts which should have revealed his intrusion to the system technicians and began to access the base files. He read fast, his eyes flickering about the screen as file after file flashed across it, his mind devouring the information.

"Yes," he whispered. "Yes. Good."

*

"So...why are you still here?" Sandy asked Jonas.

"I can't go home," Jonas replied. "My people accused one of Colonel O'Neill's closest friends of a terrible crime in order to cover the incompetence of our scientists...and my own cowardice. I stole something precious and came here to try and make amends. I've been pardoned since, but...there's still so much to do _here_. This is where I need to be."

Sandy blinked at him. "I meant why are you still _here_? In my room? I wouldn't have thought you were very keen to spend time with a Nazi and a traitor."

"Oh! I see what you mean."

"I might suspect you of harbouring ungentlemanly intentions," she went on, "but you really don't seem the type."

"I'm not," Jonas assured her, with a smile, "although I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I?."

"It's not like I need to worry about that much anymore," Sandy mused, ruefully. "With no hair and this tattoo, I'm not the catch I once was."

"I wouldn't say that," Jonas assured her. "Anyway, as I say, I can't really go around calling anyone a traitor, but I don't think you are one. Whatever Wilkes says, you don't seem like a traitor and either you're the best actress I ever met or you really can't make sense of his accusations."

"If I were a spy, I'd have to be a good actress, though," she pointed out.

"I'm usually a pretty good judge of character," he said, "and I trust you more than I trust him."

"Pip a traitor?" Sandy sounded shocked. "I can't believe that."

"I'm not saying he's a traitor," Jonas said. "I just don't _like_ him very much."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't think he treats you very well."

Sandy favoured him with a fragile smile. "That's very sweet," she said. She looked awkward, almost lost, as though she had no idea what to do or say.

"Are you alright?" Jonas asked.

"I'm not really used to people being kind to me," she explained. "Thank you." She reached up to touch Jonas' face, then changed her mind, leaned across and kissed him gently on the cheek.

*

The crate crashed down heavily onto the FRED. Everyone in the Gateroom froze.

"Careful!" Sam snapped, a flicker of panic in her eyes. She glowered at the airmen. "You did notice the word ‘reactor' written on the side of that box?"

The airmen shifted their feet, awkwardly.

"Bring the second reactor and load it _carefully_ onto the other FRED," Sam told them. "On the third we need toolkits A, B, C, G and J and as many optical couplings and circuit relays as we can fit. We'll bring whatever else we need later on, but that should do for a start." She left the Gateroom and headed for her lab to fetch her own tools.

As she approached the labs, she saw Teal'c approaching with a slight limp.

"Teal'c!"

"Major Carter."

"What happened to you?"

Teal'c forced himself to stand up straight. "The weapon has caused some small damage to my hearing; Dr Fraiser assures me that it will heal swiftly."

"The weapon?" Sam was shocked. "You shot yourself?"

"Sergeant Siler shot me," Teal'c corrected. "I know now that Major Wilkes could have incapacitated both Colonel O'Neill and myself with that weapon, without causing us lasting harm and without risk of injury to himself. We would both have been overcome with a single blast."

"It's a stun gun?" Sam asked.

"Major Wilkes claimed that he believed us to be aliens," Teal'c went on. "Why then would he not shoot without questioning? And why would he not arm himself with a deadlier weapon?"

"Perhaps he didn't have one," Sam suggested.

"He had access to all of that ship, including the weapons that killed the crew and his comrades. If he believed that the aliens had returned, he would have killed them, and most likely killed them at the door. He would not have waited for them to find him, then threatened them with a weapon that did not kill."

"Then what are you suggesting?" Sam asked. "You think that he _wanted_ to be captured?"

"I believe that he knew that we were not aliens and that he wanted to be brought _here_."

*

_P35-91A_

One of the engineering survey teams had been assigned to start work in the long, cavernous bay of the ship's reactor room. Lieutenants Schneider and Waite – escorted by the burly Marine Sergeant Cole – were currently investigating the after section of the chamber, including what Ellis Schneider had dubbed ‘the starter motor'. This was a small generator that appeared to be designed to provide initial power to begin the reaction in the primary engine. Unfortunately, it was quite inert at present and the plan was to replace the starter with a naquadah reactor. The team's role was therefore to establish clearly the function of the various components and connections surrounding the generator.

"There seem to be far too many leads coming out of this machine," Trent Waite noted. "What do you think all of these _do_?"

Ellis shrugged. "I guess the generator powers several systems in parallel," she surmised, "probably the three main reactors. We can trace the cable ducts and see."

"I'll get that," Waite said. "You keep working at removing the generator from its housing. Who knows, maybe we can get it fixed and we won't need a naquadah reactor."

"Right," Ellis agreed.

Waite took an EMF meter from his tool bag and connected a small battery to a pair of cables so that there would be a current for the meter to detect. He moved slowly away, following the cables buried in the deck and was soon swallowed up in the shadows. The lights in the reactor room still did not seem to be functioning, although the beam of his flashlight could be seen bobbing up and down. Schneider turned her attention back to the generator housing, which was secured with a number of magnetic bolts. Removing the bolts was proving difficult; she had found that a high voltage current temporarily disabled the magnetic field, but that made it hard to get a grip on the bolt and remove it.

She had managed to remove three bolts using a pair of insulated pliers when a clatter from along the deck distracted her. There was no sign of the beam from Trent's flashlight when she looked up.

"Trent?" she called. When there was no reply, Schneider tried her radio. "Trent, please respond."

Sergeant Cole frowned and raised his weapon. "Stay here," he told Schneider.

Schneider swallowed hard. She nodded her head and drew her sidearm.

Cole moved off, slowly, the beam of his flashlight cutting through the shadows. His frame had barely been swallowed up by the darkness when the beam jerked up and over. There was a thud and a clatter as Cole fell to the deck, the flashlight shining directly at Schneider. A heavy tread sounded on the deck.

"Stay back!" Schneider ordered, levelling her pistol.

The tread continued to approach.

"I will fire!" Schneider warned. Her hands were shaking; she had combat training but had not been in a fight throughout her Air Force career. When the footsteps did not grow still, she squeezed the trigger.

The footsteps continued. Schneider fired again.

With incredible speed, a figure appeared from the shadows into the light of Schneider's electric lantern. A powerful hand gripped her wrist and bent it backwards; a third shot went wild before the pistol fell from her hand. A second hand caught Schneider's throat in a crushing grasp and lifted her clear off the deck. She clawed desperately at the throttling fingers with her free hand, but the grip was like iron. Her legs kicked, uselessly.

The man who held her looked old, face weathered dark and etched with deep lines like the cracks in a tree's bark, but there was clearly no infirmity of age in him. The eyes were electric blue and filled with cruelty and an intricate tattoo covered half of his face; the other cheek was marked with a swastika.

"Please," Schneider gasped.

Behind her assailant, other figures appeared; figures which seemed shadowy even when they were in the full light of the lantern. One of these came to stand beside her attacker. The man who held Schneider stood head and shoulders above the new arrival, yet the second man radiated authority and the tall man seemed cowed by him.

The smaller man looked into Schneider's eyes. She felt a pressure in her head as he regarded her; she could feel a cold and malevolent will behind his eyes and knew that he was willing her to submit to his authority. She fought hard not to yield to the terrible pressure of his gaze and squirm and whine in supplication.

At last, the man nodded, satisfied. "Your sense of duty and loyalty does you credit," he said, admiringly. He reached up and caressed her cheek, regretfully. "Pity." He turned and walked away. "Töte sie."

*

_Stargate Command_

"Good day, Major Carter," Wilkes said, without turning from the screen. His fingers were flying across the keyboard, all pretence at awkwardness abandoned. "And Teal'c. Should I greet the creature inside you separately? I am afraid I am not well-acquainted with alien etiquette."

"How do you know of the Goa'uld I bear inside me?" Teal'c demanded.

"I can sense it with my mind," Wilkes replied. "It is an incredible ability; I could almost be grateful to those gilded bastards." He tapped the enter key with an air of finality, then stood and turned to face his visitors. "Well, I am honoured to have so much company." Sam and Teal'c were flanked by the two airmen.

"What's your game?" Sam demanded.

"I like you, Major Carter," Wilkes said, affably. "I'm sure that most of my associates would look down on a female officer, but you've got the stuff. You're a _real_ officer, not like that clown of a Colonel."

Sam stiffened, angrily. "While you're a guest on this base, you'll speak civilly when you talk about my CO."

Wilkes laughed. "Actually, I was talking about my old CO, but I suppose it applies as well to yours. He sees everything as a joke and stains his office with the ‘common touch'; he acts more like an enlisted man than an officer."

"Do you have something against enlisted men?" Teal'c demanded.

"Not as such, no," Wilkes assured him. "But officers and the ranks shouldn't mix; it isn't right. Of course you wouldn't understand; you were born to serve."

"I serve no longer!" Teal'c declared.

Sam's eyes flashed dangerously. "This conversation has gone on long enough," she decided. "We'll be moving you to less comfortable quarters, Major Wilkes. If he tries to resist..."

At that moment, all of the lights in the VIP room flickered and died; the light from the corridor also went out.

"Oh dear," Wilkes said. "I suppose that is what comes of meddling with technology that you don't understand."

 

Jack was sitting in the commissary with a cup of coffee halfway to his mouth when the lights went out. In his distraction, he spilled the hot beverage down his shirt.

"Damnit!" he hissed. "Sergeant Tabor!" he called.

"Yes, Colonel," the Mess Sergeant replied.

"I need a flashlight and a radio, if you have one."

"Right away, Sir."

 

"What is happening?" Sandy asked.

"I don't know," Jonas admitted. He stood up and moved towards the intercom phone. He tripped on a chair leg in the dark and almost fell, but Sandy caught him and held him up. He could feel her trembling as she held him against her, but her grip was firm and not entirely unpleasant.

"I've got you," she assured him.

"Yes," he agreed. "But how? How did you even know I was falling?"

"I saw you," Sandy replied.

Jonas turned towards her voice. There was no lighting, not even emergency levels. He could see nothing; nothing but two dull sheens of green light.

"Can you see the intercom?" Jonas asked, deciding not to broach the subject of her glowing eyes at this sensitive juncture.

"Of course." From the confusion in her voice, Jonas knew that she did not even realise how dark it was.

Jonas nodded, slowly. "Alright then. Take me to it."

 

Two flashlight beams picked out Wilkes. He had not moved and the airmen held their flashlights and pistols levelled at his chest.

Sam went to the intercom. "Generator room, this is Major Carter. Generator room?"

"The intercom system is down," Wilkes told her. "Emergency power is offline. None of the elevators are functioning and even NORAD is paralysed."

"That's impossible," Sam insisted. "It would take you weeks to learn to use the base systems, even if you could crack the security and..." She broke off, remembering that of course this was not the first time a novice computer user had managed to paralyse the SGC, but Linnea had been a scientific genius from a technologically advanced world, not a WWII commando.

There was a thump and one of the flashlights went out. It was only as Palmer hit the ground that Sam registered that Wilkes had moved at all. The other airman shone his torch all around the room, but there was no sign of the British officer. The airman cried out and fell.

Teal'c picked up Palmer's pistol, but before he could raise it, he was lifted up and thrown hard against one of the walls of the cell. Even in the dim illumination of a single flashlight, Sam could see Teal'c clearly enough, but she could barely make out Wilkes. It was as though his image were painted faintly on glass, so that she could see _through_ him and his form was indistinct. Then he was gone completely and the next thing Sam knew, she was held from behind in a vicelike grip.

"How?" she demanded.

"Always the scientist," Wilkes chuckled. "As I said, the aliens gave me certain gifts as a result of their experiments. I think I was quite a success, don't you? Oddly, however, they did not seem proud of their achievements when I broke their containment and took their ship from them."

Sam struggled to keep calm. "What do you want, Wilkes?" she asked.

"Empire," he replied.

"You want an Empire?"

"I want _the_ Empire!" he declared. "And with the aid of your reactors I will have the wherewithal to restore it. With the power of that ship and the knowledge of your world that I now hold in my mind, we will return and usher in a Golden Age of unity for mankind; all human life joined under a single rule and _all_ people knowing their proper place."

Sam laughed. "So that's your glorious goal, is it? You want to be the next Hitler?"

Now it was Wilkes' turn to laugh; even Sam had to admit that he sounded more composed than she did, but then he did have a slight advantage. "Hitler was a fool; racial hierarchy is a fiction, but it _is_ the simple fact that some people are better than others. Black or white, royalty is royalty; the bearing of nobility is unmistakable under any skin, just as a peasant will always be a peasant. Gentlemen and labourers are not merely separated by occupation, they are cut from a different cloth."

"You're mad!" Sam accused. "Even if this was anything more than delusions of a divinely-ordained class system, you're one man. You can't change the world on your own; not even with that spaceship."

"Come with me," he suggested. "Help me to create a new Utopia."

"I'd sooner die," Sam assured him, without hesitation.

She felt him shrug. "Couldn't hurt to ask," he said.

Lights exploded across Sam's vision and she collapsed.

_*_

Finding the intercom dead, Jonas knocked on the door of Sandy's quarters and waited for the guard to first be satisfied of his identity and second fumble for the lock by flashlight.

"I need your radio," Jonas said.

"Yes, Sir," the guard replied.

Jonas nodded his thanks as he accepted the field communicator. "This is Sierra-Golf-One-four," he said. "Can anyone hear me?"

" _SG-11-two,_ " a woman's voice replied; Captain Amy Kawalsky of the SGC anthropology unit.

" _SG-1-niner here_ ," Jack replied. " _Is subject B secure_?"

"Well, she's here if that's what you mean."

" _Good enough. What is your location, 11-two?_ "

" _Main armoury_ ," Amy replied. " _I've got a small force of SFs with me._ "

" _Stay put and hold that position,_ " Jack ordered. " _All other personnel, rendezvous at secure points; full alert._ "

"Confirmed," Jonas agreed. He turned to the two airmen. "You two are with us then. We're not far from secure point nine."

"The prisoner..." one of the SFs began to argue.

"I'll keep an eye on her," Jonas promised. "Now come on."

*

In the control room, all was chaos. When the power went down, the controls had died. The technicians immediately rushed to the emergency panels, working furiously by flashlight to shunt the Gate systems to their own, isolated backups. Power was restored to primary systems in less than three minutes; the iris could be closed now, but the Gate could not dial out more than once and the security doors and shutters were locked open.

"All security teams to the Gateroom," Sergeant Davis ordered, using the battery-powered intercom link to the SF teams' standby room. "Gateroom security compromised, I say again, _all_ security teams to the Gateroom, Gateroom security has been compromised."

General Hammond hurried down from his office as fast as he could go in the dark. "What's going on?" he demanded.

"I don't know, Sir," Davis replied. "All computers are down and we've lost main and emergency power."

In the Gateroom, the Stargate began to spin. With a whoosh of spray, an incoming wormhole formed.

"My God," Hammond murmured. "Close the iris!"

"Yes, Sir." Davis reached for the palm scanner, but before his hand made contact, he was jerked backwards out of his chair and hurled across the room. The other two technicians started forwards, but were suddenly slammed together, skulls cracking noisily against one another, and they slumped, unconscious.

Hammond stared in amazement. He knew that _someone_ must have attacked the technicians, but he could see no-one. Just for a moment, Wilkes came blurrily into view as he picked up Davis' chair and swung it at Hammond, but then the chair struck and Hammond saw nothing at all.

Wilkes gazed down at the SFs assembled in the Gateroom. There were thirty of them in total, staring at the event horizon and waiting for someone to come through, blithely unaware that the intruders had already begun to arrive. Five of Wilkes' comrades were able to shroud themselves from view almost as perfectly as he could; five was more than enough to take care of thirty soldiers. The first five SFs never knew what had hit them; five more saw only blurs. By the time anyone could make out their attackers, they were in too close for firearms and hand-to-hand all their training was useless against their genetically enhanced opponents.

Wilkes hurried to the Gateroom. As he entered, he saw Sturmscharführer Gottling poised over one of the fallen airmen with a knife in his hand.

"Halt!" Wilkes commanded. "Put your blades away; these men are not to be killed if it can be avoided. Certainly they should not be slaughtered like animals."

Gottling turned to glower at Wilkes. He rose up to his full height, towering over the officer, but Wilkes was not intimidated and after a moment, Gottling backed down. When all was said and done, he knew his place, that was why he was a part of the glorious work. He recognised that even a British officer was an officer and therefore – according to the beliefs that they shared – his natural superior. Not for the first time, Wilkes found himself pondering the place of warrant officers like the Sturmscharführer in the new order; it could prove dangerous to give such inferior specimens the degree of power that they were used to enjoying.

He banished such philosophical musings for another time, as the rest of his comrades were making their way down the ramp now, many carrying stretchers loaded with long bundles. He approached one of the men and commandeered a sonic blaster; he had told Gottling not to kill and he intended to hold to that himself.

The last man through the Stargate was also the smallest, but he filled the embarkation room with his presence.

Wilkes approached the man and saluted. "Obersturmbannführer Wenig," he said, almost reverently.

"Major Wilkes; report."

"This base is paralysed," Wilkes assured his commander. "The supplies that we need are loaded on these machines, ready to be transported to the planet and I have arranged for others who share our beliefs to join us here. We will have all the resources, manpower and information that we need to achieve our goals."

Wenig gave a thin smile. "I am delighted to see that your work is up to its usual standards."

"I know my duty, Sir," Wilkes replied. He glanced at the stretchers. "Was that necessary?"

"Yes. You have a problem with this?"

"No, Sir," Wilkes assured him, "but it would be best if our allies saw as little of that as possible. They are apt to be rather squeamish."

Wenig gave a wry smile. "We shall...bear that in mind," he promised. "Carry on, Major."

Wilkes nodded, then turned to another of the men; a tall, lean, handsome man in civilian clothing. "Johann," he greeted him. "I have a particular surprise for you, my friend. My timetable is exacting, but if we move fast, we can reclaim something that you lost a long time ago."

*

The secure point system had been developed in response to past security breaches at the SGC. Each secure point was located at the junction of two or more corridors; security barricades and small, secure sub-armouries allowed isolated groups of personnel to hold a secure point against a superior force. In combination with the sealed blast doors the system was almost perfect, but in this case the sealed doors were not functioning. Jack was glad that the armoury doors were not automatic blast doors, otherwise his troops would have been unarmed.

Jack dug in at point nine with twelve SFs and a handful of administrative personnel. "How are we doing?" Jack asked.

Captain Anna Ransom paused for a moment in thought. "Contact with troops at twelve secure points on three levels," she replied. "Main armoury and laboratory section are also secure, no contact with the Gateroom...or anyone on that level, besides the armoury. The machine rooms are also out of contact."

Jack nodded. It had been a boon running into General Hammond's clerk; her ability to juggle the verbal reports in her head and maintain a grasp of the tactical situation had proven invaluable.

" _Colonel O'Neill_!"

"Go ahead, Jonas," Jack replied, concerned; Jonas sounded worried. "What's keeping you?"

" _The VIP quarters have been locked down,_ " Jonas replied. " _There must be at least one way out, because Wilkes is gone, but we've found his guards unconscious and...Sam and Teal'c are down here as well. I don't think they're in much danger, but they're out cold._ "

"How can one guy be this much trouble?" Jack demanded.

"I think the Goa'uld ask the same of you," Ransom told him.

The radio hissed again. " _...NORAD control. Code seven. There are intruders in the maintenance system. External hatches have been released; main doors not responding to control._ "

" _Secure point nineteen; Code nine. Code nine. We have intruders emerging from level 28_."

"So much for just one man," Ransom said.

"Who would be attacking from outside?" Jack wondered. "11-two! What's your status?"

" _All clear_ ," Kawalsky assured her. " _We..._ " Her voice broke off in a burst of gunfire.

"Kawalsky!" Jack cried. "Kawalsky!"

 

Amy fired another burst of fire to keep the attackers at bay. They had advanced with incredible speed for such old men, but what had really surprised Amy was the failure of her troops to fire on them at all. She had been forced to let go of her radio and return fire herself; she had been so taken aback by the inactivity of her squad that she had quite failed to hit anything.

"Any time you want to join in," she invited, acidly, glowering at the leader of the unit. Her temper was not helped by the headache building in her temples.

The SF sergeant looked at her as though she were mad. "Ma'am?"

"If it escaped your notice, two men just tried to overrun our position."

"There's no-one there, Ma'am," the sergeant assured her.

Amy frowned and turned her attention to the corridor. "There!" she said, as one of the attackers made his way back towards her, darting between support girders for cover.

"Where?"

She drew the P90 close to her shoulder and fired a short burst, hitting the man square in the chest. He fell back and a grenade bounced along the corridor the way he had come.

"Fire in the hole!" Amy warned. She ducked back into the cover of the armoury door, but the sergeant remained where he was, staring in incomprehension. Amy grabbed his jacket and hauled him into cover just as the grenade went off.

"Where did he come from?" the sergeant demanded. "You fired and he appeared out of thin air!"

Amy raised a hand to rub her temples, only to realise that her headache was receding.

" _Kawalsky!_ "

"Sorry, Sir," Amy replied, "we had a few visitors, and there's a problem."

" _Really?_ "

"Sorry, Sir. I meant _another_ problem."

 

"Invisible Nazis," Jack sighed. "How do you write that up in a report?"

Ransom shrugged. "Don't ask me, Sir; I only type them."

" _SG-1-niner, this is SGC-Mike-one._ "

"Finally," Jack declared. "Maintenance. Go ahead Mike-one."

" _Sorry for the delay, Sir_ ," Sergeant Siler said. " _We had to force entry to the switching room. We should have power back up in a few minutes._ "

Jack said a brief, silent prayer. "Thank you, Mike-one," he responded. "That's something at least. How do we stand, Ransom?"

"I'm concerned, Sir," Ransom admitted.

"You'd have to be mad not to be."

Ransom forced a smile. "I've been thinking about what Mr Quinn said about the bulkhead doors in the VIP area. Collating the other reports of sealed corridors, I think that Major Wilkes was creating a clear path between the main ventilation shafts and the Gateroom."

"He wants out?"

"I don't think so, Sir. I think...I think he's bringing someone else _in_."

*

"Can we trust these allies of yours, Pip?" Johann asked as they left the stairwell on level 25.

"Oh, as far as we need to, certainly," Wilkes assured him. "Their ideology is close enough to ours and where it does differ they will not be difficult to mould to our needs. They will bend...or they will break."

The sound of running feet came from the corridor ahead. "Strike!" Wilkes called, readying the sonic blaster he had claimed from one of the NCOs.

"Counter!" came the immediate reply.

Wilkes smiled. "Advance and be known!"

A group of men – and a handful of women – rounded the corner, dressed in a mixture of military fatigues and civilian clothing. Their leader was a big, broad-shouldered man – as big as Gottling – with slick, black hair and a military bearing. He carried an automatic rifle sluing on his shoulder and wore a bulky, semiautomatic pistol on his hip, but carried a tranquiliser gun in his arms.

"Major Wilkes?" he asked, looking at Johann. It was an easy mistake to make; with neither man wearing the insignia of rank, it was natural to assume Johann to be the superior, with his height and Teutonic good looks.

Wilkes stepped forward with a smile, he was used to being overlooked; he was sure that this was why he was so good at making people not see him. "I'm Wilkes," he said. "You must be Captain Manners."

Manners saluted. "Chapter commander of the League of Officers, at your service, Major."

"You found the armouries on the levels above?"

"Just as you said, Sir," Manners agreed. "We came prepared and so we didn't stop to unpack anything, just brought the crates along with us."

"Good show," Wilkes said. "Well, carry on, Captain."

"Sir!" Manners saluted again and led his troops past.

Johann stifled a giggle. "League of Officers?" he asked.

Wilkes shrugged. "You do the best you can. They may be cretins, but they have the right idea. We have to hurry," he added. "It's this way."

Johann followed as Wilkes led him away. "So if someone is a member of this League, would they be in the LOO?" he asked.

 

"Someone's coming," Sandy said.

"Corridor's clear," one of the SFs reported.

Sandy shook her head, slowly. "No. They're coming."

Jonas was kneeling at Sam's side, checking her breathing. He looked up now and saw that Sandy was in earnest. "Positions," he said.

The airmen slipped out of the door to take up positions behind the support braces, while Jonas settled into the doorway. He had taken a pistol and a zat from the two guards in Wilkes' room. After a moment's pause, he handed the pistol to Sandy, readying the zat himself.

"Thank you," she said, not meaning the weapon itself. Her head snapped up. "They're coming. They're..." She raised the pistol and fired; at first, she seemed to be firing at thin air, but then Jonas saw a blurry figure, moving fast and hard to focus on. A spatter of blood splashed across the wall, seeming very vivid and definite in comparison to its indistinct source. He fired the zat and hit, but without apparent effect.

A moment later the figure reached one of the SFs and the airman was knocked flying; his flailing feet struck Jonas before he crashed into Sandy and they went down in a pile. As he fell, Jonas heard a high-pitched whine at the edge of his hearing.

Sandy was the first to free herself, shoving the airman aside with almost casual ease. She rose to her feet as Wilkes approached, blaster at the ready. The second airman twitched, his nervous system paralysed by the sonic pulse, and Wilkes' companion was leaning, exhausted against the wall.

"Come with us," Wilkes invited.

"Go to Hell!"

The pistol lost, Sandy sprang at Wilkes. She knocked the blaster from his hand and they grappled, savagely. She was taller than he was, and even a little stronger, but he was more experienced, with greater skill. He turned the fury of her rush against her and swung her hard against the concrete corridor wall. She slammed her forehead into his face and they broke apart for a moment, coming together again in a flurry of fists.

Jonas struggled up. He could not risk a shot with the two fighters so close together, so he raised the zat to bring the butt down on the back of Wilkes' head. He saw the other man from the corner of his eye as he stepped up and swung a vicious punch. Jonas threw himself back and fired the zat again; this time he definitely hit, but the man ignored the blast. A second punch caught Jonas in the side of the head and laid him out cold.

"Jonas!" Sandy looked up, distracted, as Jonas collapsed and Wilkes took the chance to drive a crippling blow to her solar plexus. Sandy staggered against the wall and had her first clear view of the second attacker. For a moment, she could not believe it. She felt suddenly weak and could not tell whether this was due to the blow or to the shock of the sight in front of her.

"Johnny?" she whispered.

Johann laughed out loud. "I go by Johann, these days," he admitted. "So _this_ is your surprise, Pip?" he asked Wilkes. "I was hoping for something a little more remarkable," he admitted.

Sandy was shocked. "Johnny! How can you say that?"

"Kept her looks, though," he admitted.

Sandy shook her head to try and clear her confusion. "You're alive, Johnny! You're...You're here. With him. I...I don't understand..." Johann interrupted her babbling with a swift punch. She staggered, but it took another blow of similar power to put her down.

"I say, old man; that was a little harsh, wasn't it?" Wilkes asked, disapprovingly.

Johann sighed. "You have no idea how often I wanted to shut that stupid, chattering mouth," he said. "I didn't think she'd be so tough; that actually hurt my arm."

"She's been altered, as we all have," Wilkes explained. "Besides, you have a bullet hole in your arm." He shook his head. "You always did overestimate your indestructibility, even before you were enhanced. Just bring Sandy with you and we'll go."

"Do you think that's necessary?" Johann demanded.

"I do indeed," Wilkes assured him.

Johann shrugged and slung his wife across his uninjured shoulder in a fireman's lift. "What about the others? Should we kill them?"

"No," Wilkes replied, firmly.  "And be a little more careful with Sandy ."

"Whose wife is she, Pip?" Johann laughed. "Anyway, she's not complaining, for once. Oh, silence is golden."

Wilkes let him go ahead a short way before following. "I always wanted her to talk more," he said, almost to himself, thinking of the grim, silent girl he had met in the field hospital. Then he shook his head, banished such sentimentality and followed.

*

"Look out!"

Corporal Wood turned at Sergeant Siler's cry of warning. His pistol was empty, so instead he picked up his largest spanner and swung it at the last of the attackers. The man collapsed in a heap.

"I always knew that thing would come in handy for something," Siler said. "Breakers set?"

"Yes, Sergeant," another of the maintenance techs reported.

"Weren't these guys supposed to be old?" Wood asked.

Siler shrugged. "Don't know, don't care," he said. "Close the main switch."

"Yes, Sergeant," Wood replied. He took hold of the switch and snapped it closed. The lights flickered back on.

Siler nodded his approval. "Close the other switches; let's light it up."

 

Jack punched the air as the emergency lighting flickered on. "Yes!" he hissed. He turned to his assembled troops. "We're taking back the control room," he said. "Form up; I'm on point. Captain Ransom, organise supporting actions."

"Yes, Sir," Ransom agreed. She ran over the positions in her head, then turned to the tac radio. "11-two," she began, "stand by to move out."

 

Wilkes raised an eyebrow at the restoration of the lighting. "That was quicker than I'd expected," he admitted. His head snapped up in alarm. "Oh dear."

Boots clattered along the corridor behind them. Wilkes knew that the airmen would not see him if he did not want them to, but that Johann was far less accomplished; certainly he could never hide with Sandy on his shoulder.

"Give me the girl," he said, urgently, but Johann merely glowered in the direction of the approaching footsteps.

The airmen tramped around the corner, weapons at the ready. "Don't move!" the leader of the patrol commanded.

Johann dumped Sandy unceremoniously on the floor. His limbs were a blur as he drew the pulsar from his hip and fired, heedless of Wilkes' warning. The first two airmen fell before they knew what was happening, but two more followed and returned fire.

Wilkes threw himself down; Johann did not. Wilkes lifted his blaster and fired; the sonic pulse froze the airmen where they stood. Wilkes sprang to his feet once more. "Let's move, Johann."

"I could use a hand," Johann said, leaning against the wall. He clutched his side and blood welled between his fingers; the wound in his upper arm had reopened.

"You trigger-happy fool," Wilkes snarled. He looked at Johann and then looked down at Sandy. "Between the two of you, I think we're better off with her," he said, hoisting Sandy easily onto his shoulder.

"You can't leave me here!" Johann protested.

"Keep up if you can," Wilkes called as he raced away.

Johann tried to go after him, but he staggered and fell. Behind him, the airmen rose unsteadily to their feet.

"You bastard," Johann spat.

 

Wilkes slipped unseen past the patrols to the control room and dialled the address for the planet that had been his prison for so long. At once, Obersturmbannführer Wenig and his men marshalled the League of Officers up the ramp with the FREDs. Wilkes turned to go, but the sound of running feet came from both sides.

"Nothing is ever simple," Wilkes sighed. He closed and locked the doors with a touch of a button, then turned to the bullet-proof window and raised the blaster. He set the weapon for maximum power and fired a long, sustained burst. The window shivered and gave a high-pitched shriek, then turned opaque as the toughened glass fragmented into tiny granules. He threw the blaster at the window and the glass disintegrated.

With a squeal of tortured metal, the left hand door was levered open. Jack O'Neill appeared in the gap. "Wilkes, don't be a fool!" he called.

"Fear not, Colonel," Wilkes laughed. "I will see you soon."

Before O'Neill could pull the trigger of his P90, Wilkes had sprung from the floor to the control panel and thrown himself through the window. He dropped twenty feet to the deck and came up running. He hurled himself through the Gate as airmen charged through the doors and the wormhole closed behind him.

*

"Jonas?"

Jonas groaned. "Sandy?" he asked, forcing his eyes open, despite the pain in his head.

"Sorry," Sam replied. "Hope you're not too disappointed," she added, as Jonas sat up, slowly.

"My head," Jonas moaned. "What hit me?"

"Probably Wilkes," Sam said, rubbing the back of her head. "At least my bruises are out of sight; you're going to have a real shiner."

Jonas sighed. "I think it was his friend, actually. What's happening?"

"I guess we'll find out soon enough. The top brass are arriving in droves and we're to report to the briefing room as soon as Janet clears us. Teal'c's gone ahead already and I was just waiting for you."

Sam rose to her feet and helped Jonas up. He swayed a little on his feet.

"How many fingers?" Sam asked.

"Two," he replied.

Sam shrugged. "It's a start. Let's go."

*

Despite their hurry, Janet took her time examining SG-1, making certain that they had suffered no serious or lasting damage from their head wounds. At last, after more than two hours, they were all released. Jack took the briefing in the absence of General Hammond, who had been transferred to the USAFA Hospital as soon as power was restored to the main doors of the mountain. The leaders of the other SG-teams were present at the briefing, as were a variety of VIPs. The SGC's regular Pentagon liaison, Major Paul Davis, had arrived in the company of a lean, severe man with iron grey hair and iron grey eyes. This was Colonel Maxwell Race, ADC to the Air Force Chief of Staff, a no-nonsense man with an intense air of natural authority.

While these two visitors were relatively friendly, they were joined by the President's Deputy Chief of Staff. Robert Allis was a slick political operator and no great fan of the military. He had masterminded a crusade against defence spending excesses and, although poles apart from Senator Kinsey, the two were united in a shared first name and hatred of the SGC. There was a fourth guest as well; a bland, serious-looking woman. Her name was Dahl, she represented the NID and that was all that even Colonel Race knew about her.

"This is what we know," Jack said, darkly. "At oh-nine-fifteen today, SG-1 brought Private Sandra Dent and Major Philip Wilkes of G Patrol, Long Range Desert Group from P35-91A to the SGC. They were placed in secure accommodation and allowed secure access to the worldwide web, but not to base computer systems. By sixteen hundred hours, Major Wilkes had somehow managed to override the access controls _and_ main system security and gain control of the base computer systems. He shut down the power grid and single-handedly took out two guards, Major Carter, Teal'c, General Hammond and three technicians to allow a number of other intruders onto the base."

"One man did this?" Allis demanded. "My understanding was that this was the most secure facility on the planet."

"Major Wilkes appears to have been rather more than human," Sam explained. "Aside from a vast store of technical knowledge, he and his fellows were experimented on by their alien captors. The results seem to include superhuman strength and a degree of..."

"Say it, Carter," Jack prompted.

"Extrasensory ability," Sam admitted.

Allis scoffed.

"We've met such capabilities before," Sam hastened to add, "and there is a scientific basis."

" _What_ scientific basis?" Allis sneered.

"Control of magnetic fields," Sam replied.

Janet sat forward a little. "The electrolyte levels in Private Dent's blood would certainly mesh with what little we know about psychic abilities."

"What about the man, Wilkes?" Race asked.

"Perfectly normal," Janet replied at once. "Not a thing out of place. Pretty impressive given how long he's been away from home. I guess the aliens must have programmed their food synthesisers to meet the needs of a terrestrial human _damnit_!"

"Dr Fraiser?" Major Davis asked, concerned.

"Extrasensory abilities," Sam explained. "Major Wilkes appears to have implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion within Dr Fraiser's mind in the space of a medical examination."

"I only worked out that something was wrong when I realised that I'd sent all of his test samples for incineration without waiting for the genetic tests to come back," Janet admitted, ruefully.

"Hah!" Allis exploded, clearly seeing this as another sign of SGC incompetence.

" _Simultaneously_ ," Jack went on, rather forcefully, "a force of some two hundred men – and women – entered the Mountain through the main ventilation ducts, which Wilkes had released. It now appears that he managed to contact these people via email."

"Who were they?" Major Parker of SG-5 asked. His interest was more than merely academic; his team had killed five of the men and wounded two more.

"They were members of a subversive organisation which exists within the United States military," Dahl answered, unbidden. She had a curiously light voice and spoke almost without moving her lips, so that it was actually hard to be sure who had spoken at all. "They call themselves the League of Officers and they have ties with similar organisations in allied nations. They operate to try and ensure that only the ‘right sort of people' are able to become military officers, working by infiltrating training centres, coercing training commanders and encouraging hazing practices among cadets. The military intelligence community keeps a close watch on them, but they have never been seen as dangerous before now."

Sam nodded, slowly. "That certainly matches what Wilkes said he wanted," she agreed. "But are you saying that the men who came through here were _serving_ officers in the US military?"

"I am," Dahl replied. "Army, Air Force, Coastguard and National Guard. They were the active members of the Great Lakes Chapter of the League – not many Naval and Marine officers in this area – all that could be summoned in short order. If nothing else comes of this, it has at least removed them from the armed forces and given us a reason to bring in the other chapters."

Parker shook his head. "I feel bad about shooting a fellow officer," he admitted. "You know they only returned fire with tranquilisers?"

"I think we have that to thank for the low body count," Jack replied. "If not for their scruples...The intruders who came through the Gate brought fourteen wrapped bundles with them; the bodies of the survey team. I doubt they would have held back if they hadn't been trying not to alienate their new allies."

There was a long pause as Jack allowed that information to sink in.

"Those were engineering teams," Jonas said. "Most of them only carried sidearms; there were civilians..." he tailed off. "Why did they bring the bodies?"

"For burial, I think," Jack replied. "To be honest, I don't really care."

"What's the total damage?" Major Davis asked, reluctantly.

"Another twelve on-base," Jack replied. "Mostly SFs killed in the Gateroom. Two stolen naquadah reactors and of course the ship we hoped to salvage is gone. In addition, Wilkes had free access to the defence database for a couple of hours."

Allis glowered. "What kind of operation are you running here?" he demanded. "Your computer security is a joke."

Major Davis coughed, politely. "Actually, Sir, Major Wilkes managed to crack the networked systems of the Pentagon and White House as well. If the launch codes were stored in online machines, we could be looking at Armageddon by now."

Allis flushed. "What about the intruders?" he asked. "Any prisoners who might shed a little light on the matter?"

"One offworld, seven locals," Jack replied, tersely. "There were also two dozen of the enemy killed during the attack. An attempt to penetrate the main armoury was thwarted by Captain Kawalsky, who seems to be immune to the mojo."

"Mojo?" Race asked.

"The extrasensory effects," Jonas explained. "Certain individuals are less susceptible to psychic influence than others. Captain Kawalsky's...intimate contact with a Goa'uld parasite _and_ an Ascended being, coupled with some meditation training, have given her considerable mental strength. A handful of other personnel reported sightings of enemies who were overlooked by their comrades; I'm working on common factors."

"Excuse me, Sirs," Major Parker said, "but what's our next move? The troops are itching for a little payback and I need to tell them if they're going to get it; if we're not shipping out soon, we need to start calming them down."

 "Colonel O'Neill will be taking command of the facility in General Hammond's absence," Colonel Race explained. "Major Davis will provide a direct line to the Pentagon and I will remain on site until General Jumper arrives to take personal command."

Jack sat up a little straighter. "General Jumper?" he asked. "Here? In person? Can...Is the Chief of Staff even allowed to do that?"

"He'll be here as soon as he can," Race agreed, "and this is an exceptional circumstance. We're taking this very seriously. Major Wilkes has walked off with most of this country's defence secrets in his head."

"It can't be that bad," Allis protested. "After all, how many disks of information can he have been carrying?"

"We suspect he memorised the information," Sam replied. "We...We think he had the ability to do that."

"Anyway, we're taking no chances," Race added. "General Jumper's policy is to pursue this matter with absolute commitment. Colonel O'Neill, I'll leave the details with you. Mr Allis, I'll answer any concerns you may have, but I'd like to keep it brief; I have letters to write to twenty-six families, explaining that their children aren't coming home without ever saying _why_."

*

Jack was feeling frustrated. A deadly enemy stood only a Gate-hop away, an enemy who had killed more than two-dozen of his colleagues and he could do nothing about them. He could not even _see_ them; a MALP and three UAVs had been destroyed within seconds of emerging from the Stargate. All they could learn was that the Gate was well-guarded, by soldiers with superb reflexes and energy weapons. The minimal transmissions received could not even confirm their suspicions that the guards were adapted prisoners, armed with the same kind of weapon that had been taken from the prisoner taken in the raid.

The prisoners – especially the adapted man – were not talking yet. Dahl had contacted the NID and begun a search of various records to identify the intruders who had been killed or captured, but as eager as Jack was to start questioning them, interrogations would have to wait until the security of the base was assured. The entire technical staff and science corps was busy restoring systems and reformatting the computers to eliminate any viruses left by Wilkes. The Gateroom was packed with SFs and a grid of laser detectors crisscrossed the space in front of the Stargate; automatic sensors that would not be fooled by the mental powers of the enhanced soldiers.

Jack was not a technician. He was not a member of the Security Forces and – although he respected their work immensely – nor could he have been. Defence was not in his nature; action was his way. He saw a danger and his instinct was to eliminate it. To be trapped, with nothing to do except stand in the machine room watching Sam and her team tinker, was worse for him than imprisonment.

"We could send a bomb," Jack suggested. "Just rub the whole lot of them off the face of the planet. I'm normally not in favour of that kind of thing, but our options are slim."

"In the absence of General Hammond, we'd need authorisation from General Vidrine, the Chief of Staff or the President to deploy a nuclear option offworld," Colonel Race reminded him.

"That's assuming Wilkes wouldn't just turn the FRED around and send the bomb somewhere else," Sam added. "Anyway, if they shelter in the spaceship they'll be secure against any blast we could set off at the Gate; that thing survived a crash-landing almost intact."

"So we take out the DHD and let 'em rot there," Jack suggested. "Cruise by once we get the bugs out of the Prometheus and take care of them then."

"With Wilkes' technical skill, the League's manpower and the equipment they stole from us, I give it a week before they can get that ship off the ground and into hyperspace," Sam admitted, "and Earth has no defence against it. The Prometheus won't be up to the task until the Asgard complete their upgrades; even then it would be a close thing. Wilkes is right," she noted, reluctantly. "With that ship and the combined, unified intelligences of that crew, he can reshape the world in a matter of hours."

"How?" Race asked, baffled. "It's just one ship."

"Jonas' people wanted jets," Sam said. "No other nation had anything that could match a jet fighter in the air and no air defences that could target a jet bomber. Just a handful of jets would have given them their entire world; a spaceship will give Wilkes ours. He could park over every major city and blast governments into ash; guns wouldn't penetrate the shields and the ship has point defences good enough to take out any missile, however powerful.

"Then there are the soldiers," she went on. "Sure, they're old and there's only a few of them, but they sliced through one of the most secure facilities on the planet with minimal losses and they can overcome all of our electronic defences in minutes. Every networked system in the world could be theirs in hours of arrival. The entire world economy operates through electronic transfers; take one bank and they could shut down capitalism. Take the pentagon – and don't think they couldn't – and they've got pretty much all of the missiles."

"And they've got Sandy."

Jack and Race turned to face the doorway. Jonas stood there, a grim expression on his face.

"And what can she do?" Race asked.

"Nothing in particular," Jonas admitted, "but after all she's been through I'd feel bad about sending a bomb while she's there."

"I haven't ruled out the possibility that they were working together," Jack assured Jonas, "and even if I had, I won't endanger the whole world for one woman."

"I know," Jonas admitted. "Anyway, the intercoms are offline for formatting, so Dr Fraiser asked me to let you know that she can tell you a little more about Sandy and Wilkes now."

Race looked over at Jack; Jack shrugged. "I guess it's something to do," he said.

 

"I need to have my head examined," Janet declared. "Or my eyes, or...something."

"Not your fault, Doc," Jack assured her. "That bastard screwed over just about _everyone's_ brains."

"I know," Janet sighed, despondently, "but if I'd just seen what I was looking at..." She shook her head. "But then we knew that Private Dent had been experimented on and that didn't make much difference."

Jack took a seat on one of the infirmary beds. "What's done is done. Just tell us what you know _now_ ," he prompted.

Janet nodded. "Well, the full genetic tests have come back and they show that both Major Wilkes and Private Dent had been subjected to extensive genetic alteration. Despite what I initially thought, neither subject could be classed as fully-human anymore; Private Dent in particular shows a genetic divergence of more than four percent."

"That much?" Jack asked, failing to sound awed.

"It's a greater divergence than that between human beings and chimpanzees," Janet assured him. "Major Wilkes showed a divergence of nearer to two percent; slightly closer to us than the great apes, but still not quite human. Exactly what the effects of these alterations would be, I can't say, but to judge by the presented phenotypes, Wilkes at least possesses significant evolutionary advantages and no drawbacks. I doubt this will have done much to shake his conviction in his own innate superiority."

Colonel Race sat down, heavily. "So how much do we know about these enhancements? What did you see the altered personnel do?"

"That's just it," Janet admitted. "People _didn't_ see them."

"So they can become invisible, or as near as, so far as the naked eye is concerned. What else?" Race pressed.

"They were fast," Teal'c replied. "Major Wilkes moved with greater speed than any warrior I have ever faced. I have not seen _any_ creature move so fast, save when SG-1 wore the armbands of the Atonik."

"Never been so sorry that we left those behind," Jack mused.

"Wilkes was also strong," Teal'c went on, "and intelligent enough to pierce the security on a computer system utterly unfamiliar to him."

"I managed to save his EEG results from the incinerator," Janet noted. "His brain was firing at twenty-four percent capacity with no degradation of autonomic function. Whoever made these alterations, they knew what they were doing."

"So to summarise," Jack said, "we have a group of racial – or at least class – supremacists with incredible speed and strength, superhuman intellect and the power to cloud men's minds. Anything I missed?"

"Senses," Jonas replied. "Sandy could see perfectly in total darkness; so perfectly, in fact, that she didn't know how dark it was. Her hearing was better than mine," he added.

Jack sighed. "Kahn Singh," he said.

Teal'c raised a questioning eyebrow. "O'Neill?"

"Wilkes," Jack replied. "He's Kahn Singh, and if he gets to Earth..."

"What are you thinking?" Race asked; he sounded almost reluctant to pose the question.

Jack looked at Race. "Eugenic War. There are plenty of people on this planet who'd still back his creed," he explained. "The League showed us that. He's smart enough to appeal to everyone who thinks they're better than everyone else. Once he starts his attack, he'll have converts by the score. He can attract racists, Southern militias and Yankee Senatorial dynasties, Royalists of all nations; anyone who believes in class division at any level." Jack's eyes took on a haunted look. "If he gets off that planet, we're done. Win or lose, he'll turn the Earth into a slaughterhouse."

"Then he doesn't get off," Race decided. "We know where that ship is, right?"

"Right," Jonas agreed.

"This base used to be a missile silo, right, Jack?"

"Right."

Race nodded his head, grimly. "Get a crane in place to lift the Gate into the launch hatch; I'll have a Tomahawk BMG-109A with a BF-9 warhead here within one hour, ready to fire through the Stargate. With the length of the launch shaft to accelerate, it'll come through too fast for even these übermenchen to shoot down and take out the ship with a direct hit. That _will_ do the trick, won't it?" he asked Jonas.

"Yes, Colonel," Jonas agreed, "but Sandy..."

"Is _one_ woman," Race insisted. "Find me an alternative if you can," he agreed, "but be good to go on the strike as soon as I get command authorisation from General Jumper."

*

_P35-91A_

Sandy Dent paced in her cell, but the sense of confinement, the awareness of her predicament, would not leave her. She was all-but consumed by claustrophobia, for all that this cell was the same size as her room in the SGC and far more open; there was no door, merely an invisible barrier across and opening in the wall. She felt uncomfortable in her skin, itchy and irritable; she felt a strong desire to lash out at something and smash it, but there was nothing in the cell that she could smash.

She stopped, suddenly, and turned towards the door.

"I see you are awake," Wilkes noted, solicitously. "I apologise for Johann's violence; I would never have condoned such treatment of you."

"Piss off," Sandy snarled.

"I thought that you would be pleased to see him," Wilkes admitted. "I was always jealous of the love you had expressed for him; I assumed that he would feel as I...as you did. I seems that I was mistaken."

"Why do you call him Johann?" Sandy demanded. "His name is Jonathon."

Wilkes shrugged. "Legally, perhaps, but he was born Johann Denk; his mother changed his name when she moved to Britain after the Great War and he readopted it when he went back."

"Oh God," Sandy groaned. "Where is he now? Can I see him? Does he even want to see me?" she asked, "or am I just a burden to him?"

"He did not make it back, but I am sure that he felt something for you once," Wilkes told her. "It is hard to be old and withered and to see you as you are, so fresh and lovely still..."

"Shut up! Don't talk to me that way, _Major Wilkes_. Whatever we had was _nothing._ I only let you have me because I wanted to fight. I never felt anything for you, even when I didn't know it was adultery."

Wilkes flinched. "I loved you," he admitted. "I loved you better than he ever did."

"More fool you. It was you, wasn't it?" she asked. "It was you who betrayed us in the desert."

Wilkes shrugged. "To the best of my knowledge, we just got unlucky. Obersturmbannführer Wenig and I only discovered our common ground _after_ we were captured by the Xar."

"You call it common ground," Sandy hissed. "I call it a shared delusion."

"We shall be great," Wilkes assured her. "You can be a part of our great work," he added. "Join us, Sandy," he urged.

"Never!" Sandy roared. "How can you ask that of me? How can you ask me to work with those _scum_ , after what they did to me! After they killed...!" She tailed off, remembering that of course, the Nazis and their allies had _not_ killed her husband after all.

"You should calm down," Wilkes cautioned. "You can't get out and rage seems to provoke an instability in you."

Sandy's brow furrowed in confusion. "Instability?"

"Look at how much you're sweating," he said. "The Xar have wrought great changes on your body; changes that will serve the Empire, even if you will not. I hope that you will change your mind, but it is not required."

"How could you do it, Pip?" Sandy demanded. "You are betraying everything we fought for to the damn Nazis!"

"Did you see what has become of the world, Sandy?" Wilkes riposted. "It is chaos. We fought for Britain, but the Empire has fallen. Now America rules and everything is money. _Money_ , Sandy; they fight and kill and oppress and destroy for nothing but filthy lucre. There is no honour in that world, but _we_ shall restore it and we shall build an Empire greater than Britain's, greater than Germany's and lorded over no one nation. It will be glorious."

For a moment, Sandy was almost caught up by his charisma and enthusiasm, but her anger was not easily set aside. "You are insane," she whispered.

Before Wilkes could respond, they both felt a gentle shudder run through the deck.

"Insane?" Wilkes asked. "Perhaps, but if I am, I have the ability to act on my delusions. In time, I shall make my insanity sane and all rationality folly. You will see, Sandy; in time."

"They'll stop you," Sandy said.

"They have not the power, now," Wilkes assured her, "but I expect them to try."

*

_The SGC_

The Tomahawk cruise missile was lowered down through the shaft from the surface, passing through the inactive Stargate until the launch booster almost touched the concrete floor. Technicians hurried to lift gantries into position and make the missile ready for launch.

"Ever think you'd see the day?" Amy Kawalsky asked.

Jack shook his head. "I've never liked sending nukes through the Gate," he admitted. "Reminds me too much of what almost happened to Abydos."

"I've got an alternative," Amy noted.

Jack turned slowly to face her. "You have?"

Amy studied her feet in great detail. "It's a _bad_ idea," she admitted, "but I _do_ have an idea."

"Then tell me, quickly," Jack insisted. "Before we set a precedent we might regret."

 


End file.
